Wobani Imperial Labor Camp
by We Will Avenge
Summary: Reckless. Aggressive. Undisciplined. In order to control her behavior, the Warden of Wobani Labor Camp issues an unusual punishment combined with solitary confinement. Jyn, stubborn as always, won't give in no matter how much harm it does her. Ergo, the Rebellion deals with damaged goods. (hints of Rebelcaptain later in, diverges a bit from canon.) (ON EXTREME HIATUS)
1. The Crime and the Punishment

**_"All human wisdom is contained in these two words- wait and hope."_**

 **-Alexandre Dumas, _The Count of Monte Cristo_**

* * *

Rain and sleet was always plaguing the camp. It was sleeting when she arrived there. It was almost always raining whenever she went out to the fields. It was raining the morning of the day they came for her, but for whatever reason, a gentle, elegant snow drifted from the grey sky when the rebels extracted her from the prisoner transport.

Maybe that said something about her. The planet's almost-frigid weather itself was happy to be rid of her presence. Her bunk mate was probably ecstatic to watch her get knocked on her ass by a droid after being released, too.

However incautious it might have seemed to fight her rescuers, Jyn Erso knew the moment one rebel directly approached her that they wanted _her_ , that the escape was only a deception and if she went with them, she would end up in another pair of shackles. She was right, in retrospect.

Then again, would being a captive the rough-and-tumble ragtags be that much worse than Imperial incarceration? No, not unless they knew who she really was, who she was the daughter of- they had to know, or else they would never have come. And that's exactly what made her launch her boots into that rebel's chest the second her shackles clattered to the floor, making a beeline for any point in time and space most opposite this Force-awful mudball called Wobani.

If she could've helped it, she wouldn't have been so reckless trying to flee. But instead of freedom, she only received the metal arm of some brusque droid slammed into her chest and suddenly she was flat on her back, glaring, dazed and furious.

If they had known what she'd faced here, they would have just let her go. They were so much more human than the Empire, and she dared to hope that a few of them might have understood.

* * *

"That's enough, prisoner! That shovel is for _digging!"_ snarled a Stormtrooper from the top edge of the ravine.

Jyn let out another involuntary wheeze of pain, clutching at her stomach as the prisoner who'd hit her in the torso with his spade turned back to his side of the trench a few feet away.

"And you, Hallik- get your ass out of the mud and get back to work!" the trooper yelled.

She barely heard the command, keeled over in the cold dirt, glaring at the ground. Her gloved hand reached out numbly and found the aluminum handle of her own shovel, dragging it towards her. Slowly, the blade crunched into the wet mud and gravel and she used it to bring herself up like a crutch. She went back to being invisible again, no one was watching her anymore- even the officer turned his back.

Her glare focused on the back of the prisoner who'd taken her by surprise just for a guffaw. He was laughing with his gang buddies, off completely scott-free, and smug about it, too.

She heard her name thrown about all kinds of foul synonyms for 'woman'- some she recognized, some she didn't, but knew she wouldn't forget.

Jyn glared vehemently and clutched at the handle of her tool. "You wanna say it to my face, Cardin?" she hissed challengingly.

He turned around as she stomped up to him. Cardin was much taller than her, had a far more muscular build, and if he knew what he was doing, he could have beaten her anywhere. But, she couldn't help but notice that he was all talk when confronting a male prisoner. She decided now was a good time to make an example out of him.

"Gotta love me a gal who gets feisty- you know what they say, hot in the streets, quadruple it in the sheets," he chuckled.

"Might want to stop all that chatter before something bad happens to you," Jyn growled.

Cardin's eyes scanned over her with an obscene glint and a lewd grin. She realized almost _expectantly_ that he was mentally undressing her and she seethed with rage.

"Gonna try and fight me, Hallik?" He smirked suggestively, taking a step nearer. "Well, I got a few moves I _know_ you'll like."

The resonant _clang_ of her dirty shovel making contact with his cheekbones was among the most satisfying things Jyn had ever heard. Cardin's head whipped to the side with the blow and he stumbled away, his posse scattering and screaming obscenities in surprise.

She threw the shovel aside and fired a kick into his stomach, sending him to the ground, then dove after and fired off punch after punch into his jaw, her other hand holding him down by the throat.

At some point, he snapped from his stupor back into fight mode and caught one of her punches, sending his own blow directly into her nose.

There was a crack of cartilage. She heard the sound before she even processed his fist coming towards her.

Jyn nearly bit a hole in her tongue as her head snapped back and she caught herself halfway through tumbling backwards, releasing her grip on his throat to clutch her nose. Her vision darkened slightly at the edges, her mind was both numb with shock and alert with the smarting in the center of her face.

She was certain she had blacked out there for a moment, and she had to admit- it was a _very_ good punch. The warmth of visceral blood soothed the perpetual chill in her fingertips for the first time since she had gotten here.

Crying out briefly, the sharp pain blinded her for only a second or two before she lunged forward again with double the ferocity, sending crimson droplets of blood scattering across the wet earth.

All of her training with Saw had made her into more than just a spitfire soldier- it had made her into a hard-fighting battle machine. But she was too blinded by rage and half-starved by the prison Warden's previous attempts to control her to put very much of it to use here. Instead, her hits were fast and uncarefully aimed, even if she was holding back her true strength with each. If she _wanted_ to kill this man, she would be punching a corpse by this point.

However, his words echoed in his head, and her nose throbbed, and the way he stripped her of any meaning with a single glance kindled that dark corner of her mind again. And all because of that, his squawking and struggling was sweet as honey to her.

"Get off him, you crazy bitch!" someone snarled, daring to approach her.

"Don't be a wuss, she's not gonna kill him or anything," someone else, not from the original group, said casually, dragging the other back. "Let Cardin learn his lesson."

"Hey bucketheads, Liana's having a scrap-down with Ricu down here! Gonna intervene or what?" called someone else.

Over the heavy ringing in her ears, she heard footsteps crushing the wet gravel underfoot.

"Hallik! Cardin! Break it up!" came the officer's voice in harsh response.

It went unheeded as she wrestled around with Cardin in the mud, her hands too sore to throw more than one or two more punches into his side. He whipped up a hand and hit her in the eye, but the carelessness of the blow let her shrug it off with ease.

"I said break it up!" the trooper warned again as another Stormtrooper dragged her away from the other prisoner, continuously holding tight to her arms to prevent her resistance. Cardin's gang comrades dragged him to his feet. "Next one to move gets to test out the new taser I got commissioned, understand?"

A light drizzle started up again. Suddenly it was very quiet, and suddenly she could hardly stand, a wave of dizziness almost taking her down.

Jyn's hand went to cradle her broken nose, a steady flow of blood trickling from between her fingers, drying on her face and gluing the edges of her leather glove to her palm. Patches of sandy mud streaked her forehead and cheek. Her sides heaved, but on pure adrenaline alone she waited for a chance to struggle away and finish what she started.

"Now, who started it? Hallik or Cardin?"

The fingers of the onlookers all pointed to her. She didn't care at all- they had blamed her for fights before, and they would continue to do it until they couldn't get away with it anymore.

"You're bantha fodder, Hallik!" hissed Cardin, words slurred with stupor.

The Stormtrooper looked over at her. She could feel that idiotic glare through the visor.

"Why did I expect any different? Wanted _another_ visit with the Warden that badly, did you, Hallik?" he said. "Let's go see him, then."

* * *

"Well, Miss Hallik," the Warden said, "we've tried almost everything; putting you on half-rations, extra work, changing your cell mates, more corporal punishment than I knew a young lady like you could tolerate…"

Jyn stood before him, rigid as a block of iron. In addition to shackles, two Stormtroopers grasped her arms, practically holding her up as her legs threatened to give out.

"You've already gotten as much an extension on your sentance as I can deliver. But nothing can convince you to behave yourself. What does it take?" his voice echoed off the metal walls.

"Have you tried _kriffing off?_ " she suggested defiantly.

A third Stormtrooper advanced from behind too quickly for her to process and slammed the end of his blaster hard into the side of her skull. She elicited a whimper of pain as her head rocked forward and her legs buckled, the two guards forcing her to stay upright with ease. Her unkempt hair had come untied from its usual out-of-the-way bun and now covered her face like a curtain, glued together in places by grime and blood.

Her glare fixed on the dusty concrete floor. A shiver racked her body quite suddenly, the telltale warning of a recurring fever she had already contracted twice from this sinkhole in her four standard weeks of prison time.

"As I was saying," the Warden continued, standing up from his desk, "this is the ninth prisoner brawl you've started since you got here. I clearly can't turn my back on you unless-"

"Cardin was asking for it," Jyn sneered, head still bent.

"Excuse me?"

"I didn't _start_ anything! He hit me with his kriffing shovel!"

He walked slowly towards her, raising an eyebrow. "And you, Liana Hallik, the famous troublemaking liar, expect me to believe that _he_ provoked _you?"_

Jyn brought her head up and rolled her eyes, the urge to insult him boiling over immediately. "Could you- stand back a bit? I can smell the sulfur coming off your cloven hooves from here."

The Warden looked down at her. "You just don't know when to shut up, do you?"

"So I've been told."

She just wanted to go back to her cell. She wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep away the ache of the fever and the pain of her injuries and everything else in her life. She wanted to ignore her stupid cell mate's griping about _whatever_ and close her eyes and not have to think about anything.

Everything hurt and right now, she'd rather just go fold in half on her brick-hard mattress like a dying varactyl and hope that, like a dying varactyl, she'd never wake up.

"And we've already seen time and time again that the IT-O won't compromise your misbehavior…"

She attempted a shrug. "You're always welcome to _try_. It'll _never_ work, but try."

The Warden let out a sigh that died at the narrow confines of his office and stood there for a moment.

"I have a solution," he said at last. "One that, admittedly, I've been wanting to test out on you for a long time. One of our guard mastiffs was retired last week…" he opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a thin black collar. "And this is her spare shock collar. You will wear this 24/7 from now on until you can resist the urge to speak out against your supervisors. You are not permitted to speak to them or any of your fellow prisoners, and I trust you can clearly see the consequence for doing so."

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off.

"You will also be moved to a private cell. You will eat, sleep and spend any time not working _there,_ in silence and solitude. Is that clear?"

Jyn was taken aback with dudgeon, eyes wide with disbelief.

"You can't do thi-" started to protest before one of the Stormtroopers clasped the collar around her neck and locked it. A rattling pain jolted through her throat, buzzing through her jaw and into her ears, causing the words to die harshly in her throat.

The Warden looked at her, leaning in. "What? What can't I do, Hallik? Tell me."

She coughed, blinking away tears as the troopers dragged her to her feet.

"We'll see if silence teaches you a lesson. Get her cleaned up and put her in cell G-23, the corner of the hallway."


	2. Split Personalities

**A/N: Thank you guys for all the follows and faves. I** **predict the story will clock in at around three or four chapters, depending on responses. Feel free to review, comments and criticism are much appreciated.**

 **Anyway, I thought I'd toy around with a little bit of frustrated craziness as Jyn gets left with her thoughts. I was reading her Wiki and was inspired by her other aliases, Tanith Pontha and Kestrel Dawn. So I crafted a dark little backstory.**

 **So here goes!**

* * *

She ran her hands under the cool water and rubbed away the dirt, then splashed it over her face, scrubbing the grime and gore from her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. Running her wet hands through the front locks of her hair, working through the stiff clumps of hair tiredly until most of the blood was gone, Jyn focused on her deep, hazed breathing, which sounded muffled to her own ears.

She smoothed her fingers underneath her eyes, over the dark circles that had been there since she was eleven, then dared to ever so slightly brush her fingertips across the bridge of her nose.

The ache was bearable, so she shut the tap off and brought her face to the mirror. A dark bruise ran across the bridge of her nose, stretching across the very edge of her cheeks and meeting with the purple contusion across her left eye.

She gently buried her face in her jacket, using it to wipe away the droplets of water that had quickly began to border on uncomfortably damp when mixed with traces of sweat from her malady.

She touched at her nose again with more pressure and hissed in pain, clutching at the sink to steady herself from an oncoming wave of nausea.

With a shallow sigh, Jyn peeled away her dirty work clothes and changed into her only other set, the apparel she was wearing when she was arrested, shivering despite the average temperatures of her new, lonely cell. She left the bloodstained clothes on the dented-up metal bench and kicked off her boots.

It was bigger than other cells. About two times larger, maybe a bit less. There was no one to share it with, the bed was a bit bigger, it felt cleaner. The catch was that her prison had now become a whole lot smaller.

That was the least of her problems now. She had a fever to sleep off, and the sooner she recovered, the better. Most of the time, guards didn't care how you were feeling unless it became too much of a hassle for them. Sometimes they'd give you medicine and send you back to your cell for a few hours, then send you out late, if they were feeling generous.

By now, Jyn knew exactly which strings to pull with the guards to get those few hours; a little feminine charm, a dash of pity, some tough humor, and she'd be off the hook for the first leg of the day. But there lie the problem- unable to speak, how was she supposed to do that? Be stubborn until understood? Die?

She flopped down onto the solid mattress and curled up onto her side, gritting her teeth against the discomfort that ached throughout her body. She dug the small crystal necklace out of her shirt, watching it flicker in the low light of the room. It had moods, tones that separated it from moment to moment in the most subtle ways. It might be duller one day, sharp and clear the next. It could give off a slight pearly glint and then a cyan one in the same lighting hours after. And always, always, it seemed to reflect her state. For example, at this moment, the crystal was fogged and frosted over, appearing grey from colorlessness.

Her thoughts had long since been reduced to barely-relevant scraps of emotion. So she chose to shut them out.

Not bothering to pull the rough blanket over herself, knowing it would be too hot, she forced herself to think about nothing at all.

* * *

She had no idea how long she had been sleeping, but as Jyn could see through the smudged, tiny window in the corner of the cell that the world outside had grown dark. If it was night, then it had been at least four hours; she could at least put together that much.

The collar pressed stiffly against her neck as she took in a deep breath and she let out the air in a frustrated huff. It might have just been the heat of her body, but already, the tight, black, plastic-like material was beginning to leave her skin abraded and raw. It only took two moments of the irritation before it felt like she could hardly breathe at all, psychologically speaking, and it was too much for her feverish, hazy temper.

Her fingers curled around the wide plastic band and she tugged at it. When it wouldn't as much as bend, she grit her teeth and pulled harder, thrashing around in frustration on the cramped bed, eventually putting both feet to the scratched chromium wall as some sort of grounding.

Her heart drummed in her chest, the claustrophobia finally kicking in. She almost dared to cry out in frustration, but, knowing that it would shock her for anything more than a cough, she moved her tongue to the back of her throat to resist any sound.

She threw her legs over the edge of the bed and lunged forward blindly in the darkness, almost fainting with the suddenness. Her clothes were damp from sweat, and she tore her shirt away to reveal a thin, loose, sleeveless undershirt that made her wonder why she hadn't just slept this way in the first place. Her hands found the rim of the sink and held fast to it while she caught her breath and got her bearings.

She slammed back the faucet handle and collected water in her palms, splashing it on her face, wetting her neck, shoulders, and chest, some limited amount of relief washing over her with the cooling sensation. Her head cleared. Her heart slowed. Her broken nose still throbbed slightly, but not in an angry way.

She'd had the fever twice already. She'd broken more important bones than her nose. She would survive. She always did.

And she would survive this as well, because there was simply no point in succumbing to fear and pain. She'd gone without friendly company for years, and, in fact, the one thing she ever really craved sometimes was to be left alone, so this punishment was actually a blessing in disguise.

She cupped some more water in her hands and drank, wiped the water lightly from her face with her damp shirt, and shut the tap off. Without a doubt that she'd be repeating this routine for a while, Jyn turned tiredly to the bed and hoped she'd lost enough time to shut her entire body down and let her sleep uninterrupted.

* * *

Someone was banging on the cell door.

Jyn shoved herself up, supporting herself on one elbow, and cursed groggily. A dim light of early morning came through the window and she realized with dread that she'd missed the wakeup call for her level entirely.

The hatch in the solid door slid open with a heavy screech and a voice came through.

"Hallik- the Warden says you're not going out today so you can soak in your new solitary confinement," the trooper said, slices of malice and irony scattered in his voice. Jyn rolled her eyes. "Enjoy your meal, _prisoner._ "

He snarled the word like he was glad to remind her. As if she needed reminders that she couldn't leave and she had to work seven-odd hours a day.

The hatch at the bottom of the door opened and she heard the sound of a tray scraping across the floor, but Jyn dropped the side of her head back into the pillow before he had even closed the first window.

She breathed a sigh of relief, closed her eyes against the lightheadedness that almost made her nauseous, and instantly fell back asleep.

She woke up around midday feeling significantly less horrible.

Having the good sense to sit up slowly this time, Jyn breathed in the neutral scent of her cell and grinned.

This was good. Quiet, calm. She would enjoy today. She could definitely get used to not having a cellmate, too.

' _Doesn't this bastard already know he can't win against either of us?'_ she thought triumphantly, not really planning on duking it out with her own existentialism.

' _Someone might think we're crazy if you keep treating me like a second personality, Liana,'_ a voice in the back of her head chimed in. ' _It hasn't even been a day and you're already talking to yourself.'_

She was in a good mood, so she dared to respond inwardly.

' _Look at you, Erso. You're holding up pretty well- you haven't cried in nearly a day,'_ she thought passive-aggressively at the alter ego.

She stood, dizzy at first, stretched her stiff muscles, and took her jacket from the bench. She retrieved the tray of mediocre sustenance paste and stale bread and sat upon the floor, amused at the foolishness of this inner dialogue with someone who had been dead for years.

' _Because you won't let me burn this out,'_ Jyn scoffed. ' _Even though I created you, Liana Hallik. You try to pretend that I'm somehow separate from you.'_

' _You_ are _seperate- you're the part of me that's weak and cries a lot. In fact, it's been awhile since I thought about you. I almost thought you'd leave me alone for a second there,'_ the other replied bitterly

' _Yeah, I cry a lot- compared to you. You don't even know what emotions are.'_

Liana smiled wryly. ' _And look how much happier I am than you. Look how far its gotten me.'_

' _Oh, I'm looking, all right- especially at that busted-ass face in the mirror. How in the galaxy did that happen? Oh yeah, you got caught for forgery and now we're in prison.'_

She scowled. ' _Okay, that was_ your _fault_ , _Erso. Saw Gerrera trained you to pick every little fight that looked you in the eyes too long, you emotional little brat.'_

' _But you're literally just me- with a different name and dead inside. You treat me like something you can blame your many flaws on just so you can put on a tough exterior,'_ Jyn Erso retaliated. ' _Sometimes I wonder if you'll_ _ever_ _grow up, you kriffing harpy.'_

' _Don't call_ me _a harpy!'_ Liana snapped.

' _I should've just gone_ _back to Saw. It would've stopped me from making you. Or that dense fool Tanith. Or that whore, Kestrel.'_

From somewhere below, Kestrel Dawn spoke up sadly, ' _We were doing just fine on Naboo until Tanith decided to run off and join those pirates with delusions of grandeur.'_

Tanith Pontha objected boldly, ' _Did you really think I was going to stick around forever and let_ that _become our life? You know you hated it, Kestrel! I thought we wouldn't have to walk the streets for money anymore, that we could find a legitimate way to spend our life, that we could explore, adventure, be happy.'_

Liana sighed aloud, exasperated. ' _And I got stuck cleaning that mess up, Pontha. Homeless on Tatooine- my survival instinct is the only reason you idiots are alive.'_

' _Your 'survival instinct' got me thrown in prison, Hallik,'_ Erso reminded calmly. ' _All that aggression helped me win street fights, but it couldn't un-kriff my life when you finally got caught thieving.'_

' _Sorry, Jyn, but what have you done lately to keep yourself alive except cry? You spend so much time missing Papa that you-"_ Liana froze suddenly, dropping the piece of stale bread in sinking reminder.

' _Yeah, there it is. Hurts, doesn't it, just the thought of him? If you're so much stronger than me, prove it. I'll bottle it up like I did when I was Tanith. You wouldn't last a week without Kestrel's aspects- an outlet for the pain. You want control, have it. You have it all.'_

Her mind was quiet for a long time as they- no, she- sat in silence on the floor of her cell. And, bored with her inner dialogue, Jyn, Liana, Kestrel, and Tanith agreed in unison upon one fact:

 _Papa is gone because of you. Nobody else cares about your suffering. You're worthless and you deserved all of this, you reckless, criminal whore._

Liana Hallik hated Jyn Erso. Maybe Jyn Erso even hated Liana Hallik back, too, for all the selfishness the former acted upon to keep herself alive.

But Hallik hated Erso for sure, because she was weak, because she was emotional, because she was annoying, but most of all, because they were one and the same.

She didn't even know who she was at this point. She couldn't tell who had control, who did what and who was speaking. She couldn't tell who was real and who was a figment of her imagination, manifested from boredom and a need to place blame. Pensive, pitiable Kestrel, full of denial as she charmed one man after another with her gentle sadness. Reckless, shallow Tanith, eager to be a part of something. Arrogant, standoffish Liana, a rogue struggling to survive, battling for control with the original human inside an empty shell.

Was she Galen Erso's daughter or Saw Gerrera's soldier?

Both?

Neither?

It was all a blur of red and black, pain and humiliation; pointlessness.

She didn't know a single thing about herself other than the fact that a nine-year-old girl was somewhere way down beneath the surface, who really wanted to go home.

Liana pretended not to give a damn. Kestrel wanted to wait the war out wistfully and let the ruins of the Empire cough her father out... eventually. Tanith tried to distract herself with shiny things, all too aware that her father was gone forever.

But Jyn honestly had to agree.

She wanted to go home.

* * *

 **Thank you for reading. Chapter 3 I plan to finish and post before the end of next week.**


	3. Hopeless

**So, I lied about when I was going to post this chapter. Sorry. The last three weeks have been insanely busy, and I also found myself with a sudden need to revise the plot to the story a bit. Thank you all for being patient with me. This chapter turned out way darker than where I originally placed the story, but I do have plans to contrast it in later chapters.**

 **As always, reviews are highly appreciated. Let me know what you think so far. Wait no longer, here's chapter 3!**

When she returned, Jyn could immediately detect an air of satisfaction around her fellow inmates. Any eyes that looked upon her would instantly turn to the collar for a moment or two, then flick up to her in either bemusement or vindication.

For a few minutes into joining the other prisoners of her level in transport, it felt relieving to be exempted from response. But it very quickly became irritating, not because she was offended by their jabs, but because Jyn knew she couldn't retaliate even if she wanted to.

"I'll be damned; she's actually alive," said her former cellmate.

"Wonder why the warden let her live," grumbled a middle-aged woman with blonde hair who Jyn had never seen before.

Who did this lady think she was? Jyn spit at this newcomer's boots as she passed to let her know what she thought of her.

"Thanks for the shoeshine, love," the blonde woman hissed, kicking at the back of Jyn's knee and missing.

"Aw, come on, Hallik, where's your sense of fun?" said her ex-cellmate. "Got some new accessories, I see."

Jyn sat down on the metal bench and said nothing. Glaring up briefly at Cardin, sitting across from her with an absolutely pompous grin on his face. She glared harder and flipped him off with both hands just to make sure he understood.

"What's-a matter, baby?" he sneered. "Loth-cat got your tongue?"

She swallowed hard to stop herself from replying.

* * *

As much as she hated to admit it, she missed her old alley crate. At least she could leave the wooden box when she wanted. At least the crate had an open side, instead of the closed metal box she now took residence in.

But, on the other hand, at least she didn't have to scrimmage and steal for food.

The catch was that now she was an indentured servant with a sentence disproportionate to her crimes. In technicality, she was only supposed to be here for nineteen years. The Warden had extended it over and over to a total of twenty years. So, with nowhere to go if she tried to bolt, Jyn swaggered casually off the shuttle cart through the gates to her next station, and started scooping coal into bins like clockwork.

Only five hours of work today, and she planned to spend all of them thinking about how she was going to get this ridiculous collar off. She had only been absentmindedly shoveling coal for a few minutes- thirty, maybe- before something pelted her hard in the back of the head.

She let out a vexed snort and whipped around to see that blonde woman again, standing at the edge of the courtyard, snickering like a schoolchild, a second lump of coal grasped in her large hand.

It seemed that in that moment, her focus on the collar had never happened at all, because she all at once glared and barked, " _What is your problem?!"_

The words had hardly left her lips before the black band beeped in caution and cracked violently. Jyn convulsed and her hands jumped to her throat. Closing her eyes against the brief pain that buzzed up into her jaw, she let out a hoarse cry and coughed hard.

And she wasn't having it. Not even with the collar- she didn't care if vengeance was childish.

Jyn reached out to the mountain of black fuel and grabbed a handful, launching them back unthinkingly at her adversary. They scattered in the air, hitting her in multiple instances (not that it would dirty the woman's pale face any more than its current state). Then, brushing the black dust from her gloves, she smirked, a little more satisfied.

She didn't need her voice to make a point. If anything, this little experiment was something of a skill enhancer.

Her jade eyes traced the edges of the walls that lined the coal pit, and came slowly to lock with the direct gaze of the Warden. A razing dread made her stomach drop as his eyes bored holes in her skull and his hand went to his pocket, drawing out a small black cylinder. He held it up to make sure she could see it- the remote control to the collar.

Jyn's hand went to her throat, fingers curling around the black band and pulling as far as she could in hopes that she could ease the pain. She inhaled sharply and waited for the second round of retribution.

The Warden glanced over at an important-looking Imperial officer who was making his way towards him and quickly remote disappeared back into his pocket.

With a sigh, her hand dropped.

She turned back to the coal bins and stared at them thoughtfully for a long moment, brushing her fingertips to her thumb, feeling the ashy dust that turned her hands black. She'd gotten off pretty easy when an inspecting officer had been witness to it, suggesting that this practice was likely not encouraged- maybe not even permitted- by the Empire. How could she use this to her advantage? Stick close to the gates. Skirt the edges of the facility and stay in plain sight. She might want to steal that remote while she was at it.

And most importantly, she needed to make her threats in the dark- if she was directly caught on any bad behavior, it could mean 'game over', but at the same time, if she bent her head to the Warden's will, if she tucked her tail between her legs, he'd automatically have the power. Jyn hated the thought of using the authorities as a crutch, but if it could get her out of this hellhole, she'd be willing to suck up her pride.

Certain creatures throughout the galaxy had been known to reside near larger creatures to ward away predators. Now it was something she'd have in common with them.

If she played her cards just right, by the time the dust cleared, the Warden would be rumored to have bought a second blaster and sleep with the lights on for _months._ She had the skills. She had the experience. All that remained was where and when she'd lay the steps of her escape. In due time.

Jyn swallowed briefly as she nodded to herself. It was slightly painful.

She'd be ready. She wouldn't break.

* * *

It had been weeks, but she couldn't count them because she hadn't exactly been keeping close track of time. She hadn't been doing much of _anything_ , really _._

While the solitude of her cell was ideal in many ways, she decided that she only loathed it. Yes, it granted her time to think, but in thinking, she began to venture into corners of her mind that she had long ago attempted to lock away, dangerous corners. Memories of the life she lead after everything went to hell haunted that lonely prison and she looked forward to escaping each day.

Memories of the street rat, the heathen, the scum, the pirate- _-_ monsters, all five- who had risen from the ashes of that day. The day the Empire came, slaughtered her mother and dragged away her father.

She only remembered a cloak of white, sharply contrasting among Death Troopers (masked monsters who woke her up in the middle of the night to this day). And inwardly, Jyn laughed at the irony of the old archetype of the good guys in white hats. Good and evil had become shades of grey that day. Now there was just her and everyone else. It made life so much easier.

But that kind of dark optimism couldn't help her here. She barely slept. She had to force herself to eat via the power of self-bullying. And she was so alone all the time.

No progress had been made towards her escape. Every moment she got close to a step, the Warden seemed to know, and made use of his leverage over her.

One wall of the cell appeared in front of her again, so Jyn turned around and went the other way a few steps until _that_ wall stopped her. She turned and went back, pacing back, looking back. Her hands were at her throat, rubbing, trying to instill the sense of feeling deep within it.

She felt sick again. She was sick and she was losing it and the door would not open.

It was so cramped in here. She could barely breathe. Her voice, it seemed she could hardly remember. It had been three weeks since she had spoken. And now, not speaking had its own type of pain: a numb, unmoving feeling in her vocal chords, a roughness like they were coated with dust.

So numb. She had to talk. It hurt.

But which hurt more?

Jyn opened her mouth and spoke softly the first word that came to her head, "Papa…"

The searing, jolting pain reminded her that it was worse indeed. With tears on her cheeks, she found her footing and continued to pace in borderline hysteria.

The word triggered a painful chain of thought.

' _What would he think of you, if your father could see you like this?'_ she growled internally. ' _What about Saw? If you had just been faster, just been better, maybe he would've kept you around. But you got busted for- you don't even remember, do you? You deserve this. You are worthless and you have nothing.'_

And with that, she came to the sorrowful realization that she truly had nothing. No one. No ship. No house. No money. Her father was dead. And there was no point to her survival. She really didn't have a reason for it. She was never really happy anywhere, doing anything. There was no point to escaping this place.

There was something darkly satisfying about the hopelessness in that moment. It was, even more than that, strange. A strange thought, realizing one didn't want to be alive anymore. And combined with hopelessness, it was liberating, liberating of the obligation to stay alive, an instinct which was largely to blame for the state of her life. For so many years, she wanted to vanish entirely from the face of the galaxy, but she was completely unable to take action herself, wishing that she could somehow _become dead_ without upsetting the world around her in some way. That Saw Gerrera, that her father (if he was alive), would stop caring about her entirely so she wouldn't feel obligated to keep existing.

Jyn stopped her restless pacing stared at the wall. The shadows were motionless.

A thought came to her and she blinked away confusing tears.

Well, that settled it.

Her heart hammered as she gathered the blanket from the bed and rolled it to vaguely resemble a rope, standing up on the bed and finding a spot in a vent to feed the cloth through and suspend said blanket rope. Confident that the bolts in the vent cover were strong enough to support her weight, her attention moved to the opposite end of the rope, fumbling with until a slipknot formed beneath her shaking fingertips.

Driving away gasps for air and desperate, pathetic sobs, she set herself into position. A position she had been in many times before, but never to any avail.

All it would take was a quick step off the bed.

A quick step off the bed…

Would it hurt? Would it even _work?_ Would it bring her father to her?

Just one step and she could be free of this pain. She didn't have to live in despair just because happiness was not an option.

She didn't move from the spot for a long time. The truth, which she had so long dismissed as harder than the lies she had fabricated for herself, was this: her father was not dead, but a pawn of the Empire, and he was never coming back.

She shook her head, shook away the nonsense, and sighed. She closed her eyes, untied the cloth from her neck, and slid down to the hard bed.

What was it that gave her hope? Where did it originate? Where did it go in those few moments?

There was something down within her that she didn't understand. It was frustrating. Some little fire rekindled itself from nothing, like a bleak, tiny candle flame, and she let out a mirthless chuckle followed by a deep sob.

Or, for a slower, less abrupt effect, she'd simply stop eating until starvation took her. That seemed like a less gruesome option, to let malaise control the beating of her heart until it stopped. Suicide by sadness. A fitting end to an underwhelming story. And if she ever found the strength to carry on again, she could hopefully reverse the effects.

She stretched out on the metal bench that they called a 'bed' and thought more about her father. She longed for his voice. She wanted to see his face. She wanted to talk and laugh again. She wanted home and a comfortable bed. Over the years, she had come to peace with the fact that she'd never have any of this again, but all of that seemed to undo itself tonight.

Removing the necklace from her neck, she untied the crystal from the rough cord and rolled in in her fingers. Then, with a flicker of her hand, it was gone, or at least appeared to be, tucked in some hidden angle behind her thumb. She reversed the motion and the illusion followed in reverse.

Her father had taught her many things, her favorite of which was magic tricks of all kinds. It had made her fingers light and swift for pickpocketing or amusing a stupid traveler in the streets for credits. What she would give for some playing cards right now, just to feel them shift between her fingers one last time before she descended to her own, slow death.

She reassembled the necklace, hung in around her neck again, and, not having slept at all since last night, instantly fell asleep in a slouched sitting position.


	4. Rebel and Suffer

The compulsion to take her own life, or even the Warden's, came in flashes some days, but was always blocked soon after by a confusing mixture of fear and hope.

The collar which prevented her communication with the outside world became not a shackle, but an occasional jolt into line when even the slightest vibration other than breath or cough left her throat. On several occasions, Jyn had even been awoken in the night by the shock of the collar. Mostly confident that she didn't talk in her sleep, the confusion stewed long enough to become helplessness. Whether it was a result of sleep talking or a personal " _sweet dreams"_ from the Warden himself, she never found out.

During the day, the blight of her waking world only promised her pain.

And days could hardly be called so- her workload had been doubled, which slowed the world around her as she chipped away at slavery, isolated from even her own mind. Days were long, nights were short, passing in a blur of grey and black, metal and madness. Her sentence of silence came to feel more like a terrible dream. She could hardly differentiate a voice from the sound of thunder or the crushing of gravel underfoot. Surreality covered her like thick blankets, weakening her firepower and smothering her tenacity.

Jyn had no fight left. After months of increased labor and miserable conditions and pain, her natural adaptability was crushed, intellect languished, the spark in her eyes faded to cold ashes.

It was working. Like a feral animal, she was gradually being broken in.

Her only time for leisure came one day a week, where, with not the slightest idea of what to do with herself, she would huddle against one wall of her cell. She would not occupy her bed unless it was time to sleep, the pillow being cursed with memories of jolting awake at the alarms for her block.

Jyn spent the entirety of these days in a beast-like stupor, dazed like a drugged Tauntaun. Her head leaned against the wall, she glared into oblivion, suspended precariously in state between sleep and wakefulness that felt not unlike purgatory. At times, it was startling how she chose not to just sleep the day away, so half-starved on half-rations, battered from silent labor, and sleep deprived from hours of silent and sorrowful rumination.

Mostly, her thoughts only drifted. Once in awhile, she thought of other things, trying to assemble plans for when she got out of prison. But at the same time, she had her doubts that she would ever get out of here. The only absolute seemed to be that Saw was not coming to save her.

Other things she thought of when she did think included the Empire, her mother, magic tricks, and words. Words most of all; mentally listing off any that she could recall. Desperate to still be able to form sentences, she would mouth them out soundlessly, focusing intently on the most complex ones she knew, the simple ones, the ones in between.

Once in thought, Jyn briefly forgot the word for 'home'. This small error sent her into pained thoughtlessness for at least an hour.

The beginning of this solitary confinement phase had involved nothing but emotions, so the emotional deadening to follow was truly a welcome relief in her eyes. But slowly, as days dragged on she grew to understand the truth of her condition; that there was a huge difference between not giving a kriff and not being _able_ to give a kriff. The giveaway was that the latter lead directly to soul-decaying boredom.

Boredom wasn't the right word to describe it, but it was as close as she could get. Emptiness, maybe? When she was out working, she'd wish to be in her cell. When in her cell, she'd rather be outside. Well, she'd rather be nowhere, not existing at all. The isolation and emptiness was always there, drawing the meaning and hope out of everything and holding it out of reach by a long run.

This greyness was punctuated only by short, fleeting bursts of defiance, where she would stand up quickly in her cell, hope lighting her eyes, and then it was blown out as easily as a candle. She would stop, then sink back down as the smoke dispersed in that same combination of fear and hope, which then washed out into boredom.

It wasn't something she knew how to fight. She _couldn't_ fight it, especially not with hope. It was nothingness, and she couldn't combat nothing. Perhaps it was that she lacked the emotional depth to panic, but upon finally accepting the fact that she had no control over this situation, Jyn broke.

* * *

The Warden continued, gesturing to the screen. "...but despite her record of great defiance, if you'll look here, you'll see now that her statistics are the most outstanding in her block- even among the highest in the camp. Incredible obedience, high productivity, and very low living needs. If I told her to sit on the floor and bark like an anooba, she'd do it."

The conference room full of Imperial officers all nodded in solemn agreement and murmured quiet approval. Then it fell quiet and all eyes were fixed on Jyn again, standing at the front of the room with her own eyes on the floor, unshackled and unrestrained, motionless only from duress. She felt like a draft animal for sale, but there was almost no humiliation within her. She had been reduced to a draft animal at any rate, so why should she care now?

"Liana Hallik is, simply put, a perfect example of the positive effects this kind of conditioning brings," he explained. "It's the most effective form of criminal rehabilitation on the scene today."

More nods.

"You see, gentlemen, any creature can be commanded. It, as with many things, takes time and discipline. For example, some people say that we'll never find the Rebel base's headquarters. It is that manner of small-mindedness that said this woman could not become an obedient, tamed, and disciplined worker."

Jyn didn't interject. She _couldn't. She_ didn't even move, knowing it wouldn't matter. Her eyes flicked up for a moment or two, but that was all. She hadn't spoken a word in weeks, learning from months of wearing it that it was easier to suppress her comments.

She had to assume she wasn't exactly a wonder to look at, as well. She'd been neglecting her appearance for some time now because her reflection would sent her into raves of self-denigration and loathing. Her hair was down, and horribly matted in a few places. The circles under her eyes, she speculated, had to be so dark by this point that they could be mistaken for bruises. Her face was smeared with ash from the previous day and could still feel it ever so slightly, but at least her broken nose had healed properly. She'd been dragged here after working, so she had changed to the sleeveless shirt (which was clean at the very least) and had no time to change back before they dragged her out.

The Warden approached her, his eyes scanning over her like she was a trophy.

One of the officers shifted uneasily. "Do you think it's wise to be that close to her?" he asked. "She _is_ unrestrained. You've told us what damage she can do."

His voice, for a reason Jyn couldn't pinpoint, made her look up, made her tense up as a infinitesimal spark of recognition surged through her, fading quicker than it had come. He'd probably surveyed the camp before.

The Warden surveyed her again and he grinned, shaking his head. "It's perfectly safe, Director," he said, pacing a circle around her as he spoke. "I think we might be able to use this tactic on your workers effective immediately, starting with Miss Hallik here."

The 'Director' (of what, Jyn couldn't care less) stood, his white cape that bothered her more than his voice falling dramatically about his figure. These Imperial officers certainly had a thing for white.

"I see," he intoned. "Grand Moff Tarkin will be pleased to hear the remaining work on the project will be finished sooner than expected. Are you absolutely certain Hallik or her peers will not become inconveniences?"

The Warden gave an amused chuckle. "I have no doubt in the galaxy. We broke her in. We fixed her." Another pat on the shoulder as he appeared back in front of her. "She's good now."

Jyn's breath hitched in her throat. Those words rattled in her skull, seemingly rattling something awake in her mind.

 _We fixed her. She's good now._

Feeling roared to life in her chest like a furnace and Jyn looked up, scowling-the first expression she had made in a while.

The Director clad in white's eyes were suddenly boring holes into hers, but she tore her gaze instantly away and pretended not to notice.

The Warden was in front of her, smiling, and most importantly- removing the collar with a swift wave of a magnet. "Isn't that right, Liana?"

She didn't say anything until the collar was completely away from her. Her hands jumped to her throat, feeling the place where it had once been so cumbersome.

"Finally," Jyn croaked as the Warden moved to hold up the collar to his audience.

The looks of shock on the countenances of the officers made the Warden whipped back around, but far too late to see her fist come crashing into his jaw.

The force of the hit sent him careening into the table, dropping the collar as the various officers cried out in shock. Somewhere within her, a fire burned. The world around her became once more irrelevant as her hand clasped around his throat and squeezed hard. She watched him writhe, glaring, inwardly ecstatic about how much she had deceived him, how much she had damaged his reputation.

This fool thought he'd tamed her. He was so confident that he'd won.

"I am not an animal, you kriffing psychopath," she growled as he clawed at her grasp on his throat.

But in that moment of glory, she hadn't seen the man in white draw a blaster from beneath his cape. And all at once, it was too late to escape. A shot went off and she, on an instinctual, catlike reflex, released the Warden and attempted to twist away.

The shot hit her dead in the chest and she stumbled away, not hearing anything other than her own body hitting the floor and the wheeze of pain from the blunt force of the shot. Her mind went blank and white stars of agony clustered together in the corner of her vision as she lay, paralyzed with pain.

She was neither dead, nor dying, she half-formulated, not very consciously understanding that she was under the mercy of the blaster's 'stun' setting.

She hardly registered the thumping and coughing of the Warden as he got to a standing position and Stormtroopers thundered into the room, quickly evacuating the officers and rendering the room abandoned except for a few Stormtroopers, Jyn, and himself. She attempted to push herself up out of blind habit, begging herself to move, to fight back, but her muscles wouldn't obey her desperate commands and she slumped to the ground.

"Haul that weevil to her feet! _"_ the Warden roared furiously, his voice hoarse.

Two troopers obliged and took her by the arms, jolting her out of the shock just enough to process the sight of a whip being unravelled.

"Do you have any idea what you've just done?!" he snarled, moving towards her.

She had to take a moment to actively recall each word before she could formulate a close approximation of his meaning. He lowered himself down to look her in the eyes, his face just inches from hers, opening his mouth to speak, but stopping himself as his eyes flicked to her chest.

Jyn seethed with anger for a moment, but as he reached for her necklace, anger quickly turned to panic.

The Warden stared, awestruck, at the kyber crystal necklace as he turned it in his fingers, then looked at her with dark suspicion.

"Where oh where did you get this?" he breathed, not waiting for her response before bundling a section of the black cord in his fingers and yanking the piece from her neck.

Jyn elicited an embarrassing yelp, not from the coercion, but as she saw the crystal leaving her immediate vicinity, something went with it. He couldn't take it from her; that crystal was her mother, her father, it was her _everything._ It was the only thing she had _left_ and it was being taken from her. Her heart was beating hard, her eyes wide as she felt like crying on the spot, but for whatever reason, when she opened her mouth to object, her vocal cords locked and no sound would come out.

"You think you're some kind of Jedi?" he continued, backing away to circle her. "The Jedi are dead! You're not invincible to everything the Empire throws at you."

He ended his path behind her, and she turned her head slightly to follow him.

"Maybe you _are_ as invulnerable as the Jedi. You're certainly committed to acting like it. This time, your punishment will be proportional to your crime. The damage you've done is irreversible, so irreversible damage is what you'll be getting, do you understand?"

Jyn was recovered enough to scoff. And now she had one of her favorite weapons. Words, like splintered glass, like a knife to the psyche. She didn't know how in-practice she was, but she wrapped her mind around once phrase and spoke with a tone he'd never forget, "You've got to be joking."

"You think it's a joke? Well, stop me if you've heard this one before."

The crack of the whip was almost deafening in the silence of the room and she jolted with a scream.

* * *

"Well, Director? Was the promise worth the trip here?" asked the solemn looking man, straightening from a leaning position as Krennic approached.

"I can't say, Galen," Krennic replied, continuing down the corridor and letting the man join him at his side. "In one sense, yes- the Warden's little experiment was indeed interesting. But in another, truer sense, no. His practices turn out ineffective on the subject and his method may certainly be improved upon. The only absolute is that we will not, in fact, have the new volume of workers very soon."

' _You mean slaves,'_ the other man snarled inwardly, though he'd never dare to share this thought. ' _The Empire's abolishment of outer rim slave trade is almost officially arbitrary with this movement, prisoners or not.'_

Galen nodded. "A shame. You know what a detriment this could be towards the completion of project Stardust."

"Of course, but as always, we will overcome this foreign obstacle, won't we?"

"Yes…" the scientist spoke softly, sounding distant. "We will."

A faint crack and a brief outcry, set on repeat, resounded from the conference room and Galen whipped around in surprise.

"That's only the Warden correcting an embarrassing error," Krennic explained. "The subject, apparently, went defective. The moment he removed that training collar he spoke of, the subject turned around and attacked him quite confidently."

"Who was the test subject?" Galen asked in deep, predictable worry. "A name?"

He hummed in amusement, almost knowingly, it seemed. "I don't recall the name; some disheveled looking human with a deep criminal history."

"What did they look like?"

"I couldn't say. I wasn't exactly concerned with her face at all, and even beyond that, I'm not sure I could tell you. Her roguish behavior was unexpected, but not unforeseeable. A little bit of persuasion was in order."

The routine of whips and responsive screams of agony continued, officers unhesitatingly patrolling the hall as if it were normal.

The scientist took in a deep breath, furrowing his brow and nodding. "I've never seen an effective side to corporal punishment. It bothers me greatly, in fact… perhaps I should go speak to the Warden; I'm sure there's no need for violence-"

Galen went to take a step back towards the conference room, but Krennic took the scientist's arm, shaking his head.

"No, trust me, Galen- once Victor makes up his mind, there's simply no changing it," Krennic said, looking the man unblinkingly in the eyes, although trying to be kind and unconcerned about it. "That's not a path you want to go down."

The scientist stopped. That eye-contact move was one he knew all too well. It was one of Krennic's built-in lie detectors, but was only noticeable to Galen because of the long history between them. Years of Krennic's lies had trained the man to see through it.

But he could say nothing, nor could he act otherwise. He simply had to feign gullibility. It was the only way.

Galen nodded with a fake submission. "Alright. If you say so."

Krennic smiled and changed the subject to financial dilemmas as they continued down the corridor.

* * *

She didn't recall the journey of being escorted to her cell, but suddenly there was a door opening and she was shoved forward. The door slid shut behind her as she stumbled a step or two and fell like a stone, gasping.

The collar was not a problem anymore. But still, she wanted nothing to do with speech for the rest of her life, or so it felt.

Jyn dragged herself a little further, shaking uncontrollably, then found it a lost cause and slumped to the ground.

She was bleeding- it was everywhere, welling through the back of her shredded shirt, sticking and drying in most places, but the gashes of the final hits still bled heavily, running down her back. She couldn't feel them as individual lashes anymore, but as a spread fire across her back and shoulders, hot with her blood. How many scars would she have after this traumatic maiming? She had stopped counting around twenty, but she suspected it was around forty. Each hit had grown more and more painful until it became unbearable, then unimaginable, and then, finally, it blended and became a fiery torture she couldn't even recall.

Tears streaming down her face, Jyn grit her teeth and took in a deep, shuddering breath that sounded almost like a sob, trying to cope with the ghost of the original infliction.

She had to stop the bleeding. She had to get up. But the only energy she had Jyn used to curl up into a ball with her back towards the door, hair in her face and blood trickling down her back.

The uncontrollable shaking didn't stop until she slipped into unconsciousness. Thankfully, it didn't take long.

* * *

Galen stared in shock at the necklace, reaching out to take it from the Stormtrooper. "Where did she get it?"

"The Warden didn't say," returned the Stormtrooper. "He only told me to give it to you. Take it as compensation for that mishap back there. Put it to use for the project, whatever that means. He is deeply sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Galen murmured distractedly, turning the kyber crystal in his hand.

He was silent as the trooper turned away.

It looked so much like the one he'd given Lyra…

He shut down the thought instantly, blinking. He couldn't lose his nerve, not now. And besides, there was no way it could have been the same one. As far as he knew, it had still been on her person when she was killed.

It was a crushing reality that Lyra was dead, and Galen was ashamed that he'd grown a slight callous to it.

He couldn't think about Jyn, wherever she was, if she was alive, if she was okay. He couldn't. He _wouldn't_. It hurt so much not to know, but there was no sane way of finding out.

But, in the meantime, a young prisoner was missing a family heirloom.

Galen approached a guard and waved an ID with almost no thought. "I'm looking for Liana Hallik. What cell number is she in?"

The guard hesitated, turning their head slightly in confusion. The request was indeed odd, but he had the rankings to get away with some special favors.

The Stormtrooper chuckled. "Hallik," she said bitterly, reminiscing in some undisclosed bad blood. "She's in G-23, fourth floor on the southwest corner. Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to unlock the cell door."

"Of course. That's fine." Galen dashed a casual smile. "Thank you."

He quickly pinned down the cell, ignoring all the bizarre looks from both prisoners and guards alike. But he stopped, however, surveying the door with disappointment and dismay. It was not a barred door, like the other cells, but solid, with two hatches, one at the bottom and one in the center. He had been hoping to speak to her face-to-face, or something close to it through the bars.

He sighed, now uncertain of this decision. Should he knock? Maybe he shouldn't say anything. The woman had quite a trying day- quite a trying life, he'd imagine. He really didn't know her, or how much she'd care to hear unhelpful apologies, apologies not even from the perpetrators.

But still, he couldn't bring himself to do anything less than empathize.

He knocked on the door. There came no response, and he wasn't surprised. Galen opened the center hatch to communicate more efficiently his feelings.

"Excuse me?" he said quietly. No response.

He looked through the hatch and recoiled in unadulterated horror.

He couldn't see much through the narrow hatch, other than the occupant was on the ground with her back to the door, and more importantly, her shirt, her back, her body- all of it drenched in blood. She was curled in such a way that she was almost unrecognizable as a human, and appeared unconscious, until he audibly gasped, in which she shifted ever so slightly, and made no movement. Maybe half-conscious, at the most.

At first, he was enraged. Then, less so, but still dumbfounded. Surely they wouldn't leave her without medical attention if it was actually fatal, right?

Galen stood there, gaping, watching her breath fall in deep shudders. How he wished he could see her face… even her hair, her figure, her eyes, any defining feature at all of this total stranger. It was an unusual feeling.

He looked around for prison guards nearby, deeming himself clear for only a few moments.

"I understand they confiscated your necklace. They turned it over to me, but I've no use for it. Not really. So I'm here to return it."

He opened the bottom hatch, set the necklace just inside, and closed it.

He continued with his head angled away, unable to look at her state of injury. "I'm not sure if you know exactly what it's made of, but… Kyber is more than valuable, it's… take good care of that crystal. If you do know what it is, and that implies very much, please, stay safe. It's a dark time for people like you and me… for Jedi and their allies, their believers. "

He cut himself off with a short huff that was meant to be a laugh, but in all honesty, he had sort of forgotten how to do that.

"I'm…" he started, but stopped himself anxiously, unsure of where to start. "I don't know if you can hear me, if you're in a state to understand these words, but I'm sorry for what they've done to you. I'm sorry for the pain the Empire is putting you through."

He had tried, but it still _felt_ meaningless, even if he did mean it.

But at the same time, he knew she likely wasn't listening. Which was both unfavorable, because he had much to say, and favorable, because he didn't know how much of it she would consider sincere.

' _What you did was quite brave, to stand up to that abuse, even if it hurt you. I know that kind words whispered through prison bars tend to lose their meaning, but I know what it's like, actually. To be a toy of the Empire,'_ he thought, just to ease himself of all he wanted to say. ' _To have everything taken from you, worked mercilessly all the while until you help them to hurt other people. I know what it's like. And while physically, I can't compare to your punishment, I am deeply, truly sorry._

' _Miss Hallik, I wish of you just one thing. The Empire must be stopped. If, when you leave this place, you have it in you, go to the Rebel Alliance. Fight with them, do something about this injustice. They're all people like you, they're people who've lost much, if not everything, to the Empire. There are even loyalists of the Empire turned against them, from what I hear. I'd like to follow suit. I don't really know why I stay, either.'_

A guard passed and his internal monologue fell quickly silent. The guard, thankfully, moved on without even a turn of their head.

' _I know the Empire has taken much from you. But there is really only one thing they want: your submission. They want to rob you of hope. Don't let them take it. If you lose hope, you'll lose this battle for certain. You'll lose like I have.'_

"Goodbye, Miss Hallik," he said. "Even though you've heard none of this, I hope that you recover well."

Galen closed the hatch and left for his ship.


	5. Stubborn

**You were promised Cassian. So you have wished it, so it shall be.**

 **Enjoy!**

* * *

That was her father's voice, talking to her through the door. Her father was here. She knew what he was saying to her. It was real. She just had to get up.

"Papa," she whispered, completely involuntarily. The door had already closed, though.

Jyn made no movement for what felt around fifteen minutes, in a stupor similar to the one she used to spend her off-days in, but deeper somehow, drifting anywhere but reality. Almost unconscious, but not quite. She might've assumed she was dead if she could recall anything about her life at all in that time.

She was jarred into full wakefulness by a pounding at her door.

"Happy one-year anniversary, Hallik," barked a guard, snickering. "One year down, nineteen to go. Get your ass up, you're moving cells in one hour."

Her cell was bright, but she could have sworn it was nightfall when she was returned to her cell.

Confused, she struggled painfully to her hands and knees, discovering she was no longer on the floor, but transferred to her bed. Her wounds had been cleaned and bandaged with the precision of a medical droid, stinging immensely with every movement but no longer bleeding. She did not recall any of this happening, though.

And hadn't someone just been speaking to her moments ago? It felt like moments, but from the looks of things, it had likely been hours. The voice was so distant, so close and yet so far. She clawed for the words that had been spoken to her, but the memories slipped through her fingers like sand, and she quickly gave up. It couldn't have been that important, whoever, or whatever it was.

However, what confused her the most was the requital of her necklace, left just in front of the door. The Warden… returned it? That couldn't be right. A guard, perhaps? Another prisoner had gotten ahold of it? That seemed most likely, but she had not even an inkling of who didn't completely hate her here.

Whoever it was, she had no way of thanking, but she thought of them with a strange kindness as she put the necklace on and felt significantly better.

Jyn was returned to a slightly less miserable status quo. She had been moved back into a shared cell with a different terrible cellmate, she never saw the black shock collar again, and she worked the average amount of hours, switched to the farming branch.

Her cellmate, Kennel, hated her right from the start. In fact, he promised to kill her the next time they had to work a shift together.

She snorted, but said nothing. Kill her. Wouldn't that be something? Whatever would she do without the compassion of her cellmate? It was almost like she'd never been threatened before.

Kennel seemed to sense how unimpressed she was and backed off slightly, but still, she could tell he wasn't joking. And now, without the protection of the Warden's little experiment, he could get away with in and no one would bat an eyelid.

If this exchange had happened before the Warden's experiment, she most likely would have given Kennel a piece of her mind.

The days of solitary confinement had chipped something within her down to its core. She struggled to pick out a specific memory from the whole ordeal other than torture and pain. Any moment spent not physically suffering was a blurred memory of agonizing sadness and abstract feeling she would not like to recall. In fact, it was so blurred that… how much time had passed, exactly?

The guard had said one year. That couldn't have been true, though. One year? Had she lost track of her life that much? Jyn could barely discern if she cared or not. The awareness that no one would care if she died had been a constant in her mind for the last five years, with the exception of one event.

Somewhere along the line she grew tired of putting up walls and let someone in. A smuggler- charming guy, irritating but gorgeous smirk, a bad boy with soft spots, but kept his head in the game. Despite some serious issues with the Hutts, Jyn liked him, seeing a person she had always longed to become, that she actually had a chance of becoming. Somewhere down there, she saw a good man, a hero even. She didn't trust his current persona, though. She saw how desperate he was to save his own skin and clear up his debts, but for whatever reason, she let herself fall right into his trap, because after a month, he betrayed her. She had been planning a scheme against a petty dictator on Corulag, and he, being the only one she had told about the plan, had tipped off the bucketheads to collect the bounty money. The entire arrest used much more force than needed, dragging her through the streets, jabbed relentlessly by stun prods, and now she was here, with no way out, no guards to bribe and no outside allies whatsoever.

She'd never forget it. If she saw that man or his wookie ever again, she'd like to think she'd kill them both. But Jyn had never been a murderer. She'd only ever killed in self defense, either against other criminals or the Empire, and even that ate at her sometimes. But she'd definitely give Solo a few scars to think about.

She wouldn't let her courage betray her, no matter the answer. She still had time to find a way out of here. She still had time.

* * *

She couldn't believe what was happening to her. And then, at the same time, she couldn't believe her luck.

One second, she could taste freedom, just outside the prisoner transport truck. She was finally getting out of here; she was in the wind, laughing inwardly about how her rescuers- or kidnappers, almost certainly sent by Saw Gerrera- thought she'd come quietly. Freedom, finally, just four measly days after embarrassing the Warden in front of his superiors; freedom with nineteen years of her sentence left to go.

The next second, she was flat on her already wounded back, sending wicked arcs of pain through her body, and that pain alone blurred her vision and left her breathless.

There was an abnormally snarky comment from the droid that had thrown her down. Jyn, almost unconscious, could only glare up spitefully at the droid from the cold dirt.

Her expression changed to confusion when she focused on the symbols printed on the droid's shoulders. That was an Imperial droid…

"Good work there, Kaytue," chimed the rebel she had kicked in the chest victoriously, descending from the cart. Two other rebels approached her and hauled her to her feet.

Then, more shackles.

"It was a good try," the rebel told her, smirking. "But we're not here to play games, lass."

Had she shot herself in the foot by resisting? Probably not. She knew what kriffing herself over looked and felt like, and it wasn't this. Other than the shackles, there was no strike, no venomous threats, no exasperated, impatient shoves. They didn't seem surprised whatsoever by any tug at her metaphorical leash. There was a definite kindness that they showed her compared to the Empire and it set off every alarm in her system to get the hell out. If only she could.

They pushed her forward hastily to a nearby ship, and she, with nowhere else to go, obliged- but not without making it slightly difficult for them.

It was only after they'd left the planet's atmosphere that she realized what she was in for. Jyn honestly didn't think they'd make it this far. She watched them flit about the ship for a few moments, heaving against her bandages, through which she could already feel traces of blood creeping across the cotton. Someone approached her.

She eyed him wearily and warily as he sat down on a crate in front of her and smiled. Still, it was that exact same rebel who had freed her and trapped her in a span of ten seconds.

"Name's Sergeant Ruescott Melshi," he introduced himself. "We're Extraction Team Bravo. I saw K-2SO was a tid rough with you there, lassie. You okay?"

She glared at him for a moment. "I'm fine," she muttered through grit teeth, moving her eyes away.

"You sure?"

Jyn elected not to respond, turning her gaze to her hands, shackled in her lap. She blinked away tears, tears of confusion and frustration and relief, all of which she refused to communicate.

"We're not here to beat you senseless like those Imperial bastards do, lass. You're safe with us," he said. He reached out to pat her knee sympathetically.

She batted his hand away and kicked him in the shin. "Get off me, I said I'm fine!" she snarled.

The rebel shrugged. "We got tips of an incident that happened five days ago… If you need medical attention, all you need to do is say."

Jyn scowled. "I don't know what you heard, but it's wrong. Leave me alone!"

"She's bleeding, boss," tipped off a rebel behind her. "On her back. Must've been Kaytue that opened up the scars."

Jyn sighed angrily. 'Snitch,' she thought.

Melshi sighed as well, looking over at the droid who had grown still, quiet, and defensive at the mention of it's name.

"C'mon, Kay," the sergeant complained.

The droid, K-2SO, looked irritated. "I believed she was a danger to herself and others, so I stopped her by using force," snipped the droid. "It's not my fault you let an angry cherfer out of its pen," it added in a quieter tone.

Jyn blinked. "Did that Imperial droid just call me a cherfer?" she asked in disbelief.

K-2SO only shrugged and moved to the cockpit.

She didn't wait for an answer. "Look, I don't know what he wants, but you can tell Saw Gerrera to forget it! He clearly didn't want me the first time, I'm not going-"

"We're not Saw's rebels," the sergeant interrupted hesitantly. "We cut off his ties with the Alliance years ago…"

Her brow furrowed. She looked around at the faces of Extraction Team Bravo, confused.

Who else would want her?

"So where do you come from?" she inquired nervously. "What is it that you want from me?"

"That's a question for when we get back," Melshi replied. "And you are not supposed to be injured when we get back, either. Are you going to let us help you-"

"If you touch me, I swear to the Force I will-" she interjected insistently.

"-or are you going to make us use tranquilizers?"

Jyn looked at him for a long time. "You're not giving me a choice, are you?"

Some rebel behind him glowered at her. "No. Just let us be nice to you. Would you rather sit there and bleed for six hours?"

She let out a reluctant, defeated sigh and shrugged. They'd won this round. She could find a way to strike back in the next six hours.

* * *

"Melshi," demanded a stern voice from the bottom of the boarding ramp. "You were supposed to turn Erso over to General Draven the moment you got back. What's the hold up?"

Sergeant Melshi turned, wincing, from the chaos to the officer now boarding the ship.

"We've run into a bit of an issue, Captain," he replied quickly. "You see, towards the end of the trip, she stole a key off one of my crew, unlocked her shackles, and somehow climbed up onto a ten-footer storage rack. You should have seen her- she was like a spider."

The Captain didn't even look surprised, keeping his eyes studied on a holotablet, reading an entirely different topic. "You were warned she was a legendary pain in the ass. Just drag her down."

"We tried, Captain Andor," said one of the crew of Team Bravo, emerging from a hallway down which clattering and shouting could be heard. "She managed to grab several toolboxes and started throwing assorted tools and anyone who came close to her."

"So send Kaytue in there."

"Also attempted, but she said something and now he's in one of his moods, you know? He won't help."

The Captain shook his head. "So use the stun setting on your blaster."

Melshi cringed. "I would, but… she's already injured, sir."

Cassian looked up. "What?" he barked. "The General explicitly said that she was not to be harmed."

"That'd be Kaytue's doing as well," Melshi said.

Cassian sighed. "Of course it was Kay. I'll talk to him."

"You're the only one he'll really listen to," said the other rebel. "He threw her down to keep her from running off, opened up some recent scarring."

"What do you mean? She was already injured?"

"Apparently so. We got intel that she'd crossed the warden of the camp and got a pretty bad flogging just days earlier."

"We don't have the time to wait until she's healed," Cassian muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then processing what he'd said, he looked up. "Flogging? The Empire still uses that tactic on prisoners?" he asked rhetorically, disbelievingly.

"I know, they're savages."

There was a louder clatter from deeper within the ship.

"Kriff off!" screamed a woman that he could only assume was the one in question.

Cassian strode down the hallway and turned to see exactly what he'd pictured: seven-some rebels trying to make it within six feet of her perch eleven feet off the ground, balanced impossibly on a shelf. She looked indeed in pain, but it appeared to distort into fuel for a wild survival instinct that kept her perched there through it. A seemingly endless barrage of assorted tools rained painfully down upon the crew.

"Hey!" he snapped to the group. "That's enough, all of you!"

His declaration went unheard. But, even so, he really didn't have the time to deal with this anyway.

"She'll have to run out of stuff to throw eventually, right?" Melshi asked over his shoulder.

Cassian shrugged. There was a sudden cease-fire of flying pilex drivers and motivator bolts, and subsequently, silence. She was, in fact, out of tools to throw.

"Jyn," Cassian said in the lull of violence.

She turned, her green eyes throwing shocked diamond daggers into his skull as if the name had not been spoken in her presence in years. For a moment, a millisecond, he forgot what he intended to say.

"Come down from there," he continued calmly. "We're not going to hurt you. You have something we need in exchange for-"

He was cut off by a flying toolbox that decked him hard in the chest. He stumbled back as turmoil ensued, and he, not in the mood for games, turned with a sigh and stormed out of the corridor.

"Get her down from there. I'll send Kaytue back in and tell Draven you'll be late," he growled.

"But sir-"

"Get her under control, Melshi!"


	6. Stray

**Surprise! I'm alive! Sorry to anyone confused about the story's end- there is still more to come. I simply had to take a hiatus because of the end of the school year, I was struggling a bit with school and couldn't get the time to work on my story as much, and in addition, I had a horrible writer's block. You know how that goes, blah blah blah. But I have returned. The previous edition of chapter 6 was positively _awful_ , and I ended up taking it down shortly after it was posted. For those who read it, please forget it ever happened. You all deserve better than me throwing out half-baked writing.**

 **And now, back to your regularly scheduled program. Thank you all for your thoughtful reviews in the past and future.**

* * *

The breeze of Yavin 4 would've been relaxing if Cassian possessed the emotional capacity to feel relaxed. But, standing at the edge of the base, looking out at the jungle moon in quiet contemplation, he knew he didn't really have the capacity to feel very much at all. He could barely even feel the breeze.

' _You've done terrible things.'_

He looked down. He wasn't going to do it, but he couldn't help but think.

If he did it, would it hurt? Would it help him? Would it stop the suffering? It was a long way down from this high up on the ancient temples they now used as a base. Just a few short steps, and then would he black out before he hit the ground, or…?

It would be so easy. He didn't really have to keep suffering for the fight. And, unlike every other death in his life, he wouldn't have to be there for the fallout. He'd done enough, right? No one would blame him for calling it quits- they all knew _exactly_ what was going on by now.

Everyone said he was in 'pain'. But that's not what it was. It was nothing. The closest it came to any feeling was surreality or sadness, just unending emptiness, and at the same time it was al so raw and real. And that created an equity of suicidal tensions masked beneath the fabricated personality of a quiet, reserved captain.

' _Then why won't you do it? What's stopping you?'_

"Cassian," said a voice behind him, with the sharpness of an order.

He just about jumped out of his skin, in the process of spinning around as K-2SO grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and dragged him backwards.

"I thought we were past this," K-2SO barked.

"I wasn't thinking about jumping, if that's what you're worried about," Cassian murmured. "We're past this."

"Senator Mothma directly forbid you to do certain activities that might encourage this type of behavior, if not excuse you from the stress of the Rebellion entirely. If I'll remind you, one of them is standing alone on ledges. _Again."_

He scoffed. "That was a year ago."

If a droid could look like it wanted to beat its owner senseless for such a brainless statement, then it would look like K-2.

"And six months after you attempted by other means. Would you like me to inform Senator Mothma of those numerous occasions?" K-2SO asked bitterly. "It _is_ part of my duty to inform her of such things."

Mon Mothma had tried to simply dismiss him for a while, to take a break and try to recover. But the useless feeling that overtook made it all worse. So instead, she opted to keep him under close eye, trying not to stress him out, sending him on purely diplomatic missions for the time being. It was still worse. She tried so hard, and he couldn't forgive himself for wasting so much of her attention and energy. Mon had become a sort of mother figure when he'd first come to the Rebellion at age seven, but somewhere along the way, she became too preoccupied with the war to give very much guidance, handing him off to K-2SO for the time being. Her current efforts to help him were likely born of guilt as though she suspected it was her own fault he ended up like this. In the end, they were both stressed out.

"I don't need that kind of monitoring anymore. She put you in charge of me when I was twelve," Cassian retorted.

"To protect you."

"To babysit me. You're a babysitter, Kay."

The silence that followed told Cassian he'd crossed a line and left him scrambling for a correction, unable to believe that, once again, he had failed to see the situation escalating before he said something regretful.

"Am I not your friend, Cassian?" the droid asked after a pause, before the captain could take it back.

"That's not what I meant," he blurted.

"Then what was your intended meaning?"

"Can we drop it, Kay? I don't want to talk about this."

Cassian pushed past the droid and ducked into an opening that resembled some sort of window in the side of the temple.

"I'm just trying to help you," K-2SO said, following him.

He stopped, sighing. He nodded slightly, trying to signal that the situation had been diffused- although he wasn't sure it counted if he was consciously puppeteering his body language in close approximations of a normal human, as he'd forgotten how to do those things somewhere down the isolated line.

"I know, Kay," he murmured as sincerely as he could control, turning to pat the droid on the arm. "Thank you."

"And also-" the droid added after a second pause, "Melshi and his crew were summoned to the other side of the base twenty minutes ago. He wanted me to inform you that they were unsuccessful in trying to remove Jyn Erso from the ship, but have put it on lockdown until it is convenient for one to evacuate her. They believe that, since you had the most amount of success in persuading her, it would be best for you to try it."

"Oh, of _course_."

Cassian turned back to the window once more before he departed for the hangar and looked out.

' _Not this time. You can live another day. But when death comes for you- and it will- you will deserve every second of it.'_

* * *

He had heard campfire stories about days in the Old Republic during a galaxy-wide pandemic of intelligent alien monsters with a killer hunting instinct that would sneak onto ships, out the power, and from hidden vantages pick off the crew one by one, suddenly and gruesomely. The savage monsters were built for murder and nigh unstoppable, breeding wherever some unlucky host dared to tread too close. And supposedly, they never left a single survivor aboard a vessel, according to Melshi. Where did the stories come from, Cassian wondered, if there were no survivors?

But as he stepped silently into the darkened ship, he wouldn't describe the mood any other way. He was looking for a hazardous, aggressive stray hiding anywhere in the shadows, and technically, he could do nothing to defend himself- nothing that she couldn't outmatch, anyway.

They had removed anything that might be used first-resort as a weapon: blasters, daggers, detonators, plasma cutters, anything long and liftable such as shovels, even screwdrivers. But he had a feeling it only encouraged her.

There was movement in the corner of his eye and he spun around in time to process a blur of brown and grey dropping down from a rafter on the ceiling. He jumped back, instantly drawing his blaster and taking sharp aim.

"Drop it," Cassian demanded, gesturing with his blaster.

Jyn Erso only tightened her grip on the box cutter, thrusting it out and glaring at him fiercely.

His blaster was not on kill, but she didn't need to know that. He had blatantly made sure it was on the stun setting before he came aboard, counting on the fact that he'd need to open fire and that it was be very, disgustingly easy for him to pull the trigger.

"This is not on stun," he lied to her. "Drop it."

She accepted the bluff, to his surprise, and hesitantly let the box cutter slip from her hand and clatter to the floor, holding her hands up in surrender.

Cassian was over one-hundred percent certain that she was far from giving up- knowing how hard she'd battled the extraction team on the way here, there was no rationality to quitting. But he wasn't here to bully her into leaving, so the second she dropped the blade, he lowered his blaster and set it in its holster.

That was when she made her move, darting past him. Not a smart choice. He instinctively caught Jyn Erso around the waist before she could flee to the loading ramp of the ship and spun them both around, putting himself back in front of the escape. Cassian dodged a potentially deadly kick as he attempted to calm her, catching both her wrists and forcing her backwards.

"Let go of me!" she demanded. "I'm not giving you anything!"

Cassian did not oblige, instead frowning in surprise at what he realized was _supposed_ to be much more violent protest. "You- you're so weak," he said, genuinely alarmed as he kept her pushed away with disconcerting ease. He certainly didn't intend for it to sound as insulting as it did- it was just an observation, but at this moment he'd never been this poorly spoken in his life. He meant weak as a result of her condition. That wasn't the message she received.

She let out a frustrated grunt and continued her efforts regardless, panting wildly. He observed the paleness of her face contrasted with the dark, exhausted circles under her fraught and agitated gaze, and stopped pushing, instead bringing one of her hands closer to him.

"Are you iron deficient or something?" he asked concernedly. "Let me check your palms."

She writhed under his touch like his fingertips were razorblades and scrambled away from him, yanking her hand from his grasp.

He caught a glimpse of her back, her shirt soaked in blood, and raised an eyebrow.

"Get the hell away from me!" she barked. "What is this?"

"Besides extremely difficult? Thanks to you, by the way," he asked. "It was a rescue mission organized by the Alliance To Restore the Republic. The Rebellion, as others would call it."

"Why?" she growled lowly, rigid like a block of steel, and yet, somehow, coiled like an injured serpent ready to make a final strike.

"We think you might be able to help us."

She shook her head, closing her eyes, and backed away tiredly, never turning her back to him. Erso leaned against a wall in a corner of the room beyond the corridor, sighing heavily.

"You're not getting me off this ship. Not while it's parked on… wherever the hell we are."

"You need medical attention," he said flatly, feeling simultaneously robotic and exactly the way she felt- tired and depressed. "We can't give it to you here."

"Then don't bother. Please just leave me the kriff alone."

He huffed impatiently. ' _What is her problem?'_

"Would you rather die here?" he asked.

She fell into a silence that spoke volumes, and didn't seem to care how much she revealed when she replied quietly, "I've been wishing I was dead for a long time."

Cassian blinked, covering a sudden inhale with a long exhale that made it appear a sigh instead of a gasp of- well, what was it? Panic, or bordering on it.

Was he having a heart attack? His chest hurt suddenly; there was a strange weight in his abdomen that he'd never felt before. It took him a moment to realize that it was just an emotion, a reaction. Her words, though he didn't know any other thing about her, _stang_ him.

And nothing should be able to do that. Nothing had been able to do that for a very long time.

"I read your file," he said. "I know what they did to you. I'm sorry."

"I don't need your pity."

"You're not weak for needing help, you know."

"I said I don't need your pity. Piss off."

"It's not pity- it's…" he soughed, annoyed. "How hard are you going to make this?"

She glared daggers into him, which wavered from slightly pleading to slightly embarrassed and back again, but there was something relieving about the fury and furor in her gaze. Perhaps he was at ease to see that the events at Wobani hadn't withered her down to nothing but an empty husk after all- just a tired husk. Perhaps this wasn't a rabid rock dragon, all spite and bite and meanness, but a stray dog, angry (and scared, though she'd probably never admit it).

" _Obscenely_ hard," she replied confidently.

He took a step forward, and she instantly took a larger one backwards. Cassian raised an eyebrow, wondering where her confidence was now, and somewhat regretting that he had chased it away.

"If you want me off, you're going to have to drag my dead body off," she hissed.

' _Fine by me,'_ he almost said. Part of him, the part he pretended was his better half, took one look at her viridian eyes glazed over with pain and thought, ' _No, it's not, actually.'_

"How about your unconscious body?" he asked instead, just because the answer would entertain him.

Jyn tilted her head. "Seriously? Are these fighting words?" she snorted. "Or are they words of concern? Answer carefully, rebel- one option will get a boot embedded in your teeth."

"I give it three minutes or less before you pass out from blood loss."

"Blood loss?"

"You tore your stitches again. There is blood port and starboard- how did you not notice?"

She faltered for a moment, eyeing him cautiously. Her entire expression told him she noticed. But her voice was noticeably weak as she tried to play it off. "And I'm still standing. You can only guess what I'm capable of."

"If you wanna keep standing, and I think you would, just come with me."

Jyn stood her ground stubbornly, albeit her energy growing fainter by the second. "Weren't you looking for a fight, or…?"

Cassian moved towards her again, and she backed away, quickly extending one arm to keep him at a distance, the other reaching out to her side for a wrench left balanced on the edge of a crate.

"Stay away from me," she ordered.

He continued to approach her slowly, as not to back her into the wall or send her running. She made no further movement to take the wrench, locking down his gaze warily. He entertained the distraction of eye contact as he took hold of her wrist and urged her away from the wall. He took her other wrist, backing towards the ramp of the ship.

K-2SO would have mocked Cassian for this gentleness after all the disturbances Jyn Erso had caused. Cassian knew it as well. Jyn was, even though thoroughly abused, a troublemaker, a criminal. Why he should dare to give her more patience than she deserved was somewhat beyond him.

And yet, here he was, staring into the eyes of this woman he'd never met before and leading her kindly and with all the fastidiousness of leading a frightened varactyl from a stable.

Until, of course, they made it off the ramp, and the noise of the hangar seemed to break her from the spell of serenity. She pulled back against his grasp sharply, but was not strong enough to escape.

"You will drag this out at any cost, won't you?" he asked rhetorically.

"If you're so concerned with cost, I'd be happy to kick your ass free of charge," she muttered. Cassian watched, generally impressed by her audacity, as she glared furiously at him and struggled.

She fell like a stone, so suddenly that Cassian barely caught her in time. Still trying to resist, she batted away his hands.

"You just don't know when to quit, do you?" he said to her.

' _The reports are right- she's an absolute firebrand. Completely unbreakable. So how is it that you, of all people, managed to have the most success in getting her to co-operate?'_

* * *

 **A/N; If anyone caught the Alien reference in there, congrats! You've won a free Internet high-five!**


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